As I've said before in response to iPad stories, I would be willing to pay for very high quality news and analysis. I'm envisioning a kind of news aggregator that brings us the "best of the blogs" or something along those lines. While it's true that most blogs suck, it's also true that there are some that are incredibly good because they are written by substantive experts in a field. Imagine that you had health care articles written by a health care economist or articles on the war in Afghanistan written by a former professor at West Point or articles about Somali pirates written by a Somali pirate? An entity that could pull all that together and provide some editorial oversight to make sure that everything written was accessible to a general audience and to do some vetting of the articles (maybe a peer-review process) -- I would totally pay for that, and I suspect others would too.
Yes, but... reporting does not require expertise, except at reporting. Journalists are not supposed to be experts in the subjects they report on, they are supposed to be experts at finding out about things. This is where the "expert blogger" model breaks down. They might be wonderful at analysis (and the sort of people who traditionally write op-ed pieces for good newspapers), but they are very likely not out in the field reporting on events themselves. They rely on the people who do. So who takes the place of reporting in this brave new journalism model?
I think what the old established news megaliths (AP, NYT, etc.) are missing is that the subscription paradigm is being supplanted by the on-demand era. They can't quite come to terms with what "being digital" means. We can now buy movies, TV shows, and songs individually based on our personal choices, why should we have buy news as all-or-nothing packages? The print industry needs to implement a micro-payment system and join the future. The iPad isn't going to reverse evolving consumer behavior.
I'd gladly pay a 25 cents apiece to read stories that I'm interested in, but I won't pay $25 a month to subscribe to hundreds that I have NO interest in. The digital marketplace is about choice and customization, not the same old packaging that print has required for years. The industry should offer an on-demand model for news consumption and paid readership (profit) would grow. If they keep alienating consumers by forcing us to buy package we don't want (or can't afford), then they will continue to languish.
The old print media is so entrenched in the way things have always worked for them before that they've become averse to the idea that they can still be successful by evolving. This week Apple just sold their 10 BILLIONTH song -- and the buyer did not have to buy the whole artist CD to get it. Sooner or later somebody (besides Apple) will fully grasp this and adapt to offer new consumer options based on customization and choice. That will be the beginning of how a venerable and important news industry can begin to thrive again in the era of digital delivery.
Yes, but... reporting does not require expertise, except at reporting. Journalists are not supposed to be experts in the subjects they report on, they are supposed to be experts at finding out about things. This is where the "expert blogger" model breaks down. They might be wonderful at analysis (and the sort of people who traditionally write op-ed pieces for good newspapers), but they are very likely not out in the field reporting on events themselves. They rely on the people who do. So who takes the place of reporting in this brave new journalism model?
I think that part of the role you're describing will be taken on by the substantive experts. If a substantive expert in, say, federal reserve policy find success in writing stories for a subscription-based news provider, then writing those stories will become a larger part of his/her career. To improve those stories, the writer will need to go out and talk to people in the field, look up facts they otherwise would not have looked up, etc. In other words, they'll become part-time reporters in their area of expertise.
Now, there are a very limited set of roles that reporters play today (or at least they used to play 20 years ago) that the substantive expert model would probably not support. I think the biggest one is the role of looking for wrong doing on the part of public officials, corporations, etc. Conflicts of interest could make it hard for the substantive experts to write those types of stories, or at least hard to put their name on such a story. But I think this is easily solved by having a few people specialize in this type of writing. I think this role could be supported by the subscription model that I'm imagining.
News subscriptions on the iPad will be a huge flop. There isn't enough interest in paying for news when you have the internet and free news sites. Its not a long term sustainable model...
iPad is certainly a very cool device, but it doesn't yet replace the need for newspapers and magazines.
I'd gladly pay a 25 cents apiece to read stories that I'm interested in,
Wow. Maybe you read less news than I do.
I'd have spent 3 or 4 bucks just on the Chile earthquake and impending Hawaii tsunami, just today. And the story is just beginning to be reported in depth, and the tsunami has hours to go before it hits.
When a story interests me, I read it in multiple papers. For example, if there's a mideast bombing, I might read both the Jerusalem Post and Al Jazeera. For political news, I read the NYT and the Washington Post and maybe a couple of others.
Financial news? NYT, WSJ, et. al.
For big deal stuff in small towns, like high school shootings, I read the local papers in addition to the nationals.
And of course, I read the Boston Globe for free every day for the local news and events.
In this day of access to thousands of quality sources at my fingertips, for free, I can't understand subscribing to any single source. Not at any price, unless there's something unique about them, such as certain specialty magazines with content which is ignored by the wider media.
And that's just WRT news. Micropayment systems have already been tried in various contexts, and have never done well. The explanation that makes sense to me is that people hate being nickeled and dimed.
I an sceptical that anybody will be able to keep us down on the farm now that we've seen Paree.
I think what the old established news megaliths (AP, NYT, etc.) are missing is that the subscription paradigm is being supplanted by the on-demand era.
I think you have this exactly right(even the parts I didn't quote). And as another poster says, say you want to get a little news from one source, some more from another. $30/month from each source and suddenly you are spending hundreds of dollars a month.
I personally have ALWAYS hated subscriptions of any sort. I tend to read the news when there is something going on I am interested in, I have time to take a long lunch, I am at the beach, have along flight ahead of me, etc. I am perfectly happy in these cases to put a dollar or two for the NYT or a magazine, and would be open to doing this on the iPad. In fact even if the NYT was $10/month, I'd rather pay $2/issue for it - some months I might get it 10X, some times, I might not get it at all. I find that subscriptions usually wind up with you sending someone a bunch of money every month for something you don't use.
I'm not sure why everyone seems to think the iPad is their chance to force feed the repeatedly failed subscription model - to me this seems like it will just: A) kill the iPad, Be another case of old media blowing their (last?) chance to do it right. iTunes is more or less the only highly successful paid content service on the internet, and yet business continues to not get that people only WANT TO PAY FOR WHAT THEY USE. When will they get that selling 1,000,000 things for $1 gets you more money than selling 1,000 for $10? With distribution virtually free, additional volume costs THEM NOTHING. How do the music companies feel about that extra $0.30/song on iTunes and all of the volume they lost on it?
The only way I see around this is if they get that CHEAP might work. $3-5/month, and that stuff will move like hotcakes. $20-30, and no one buys it.
I think that part of the role you're describing will be taken on by the substantive experts. If a substantive expert in, say, federal reserve policy find success in writing stories for a subscription-based news provider, then writing those stories will become a larger part of his/her career. To improve those stories, the writer will need to go out and talk to people in the field, look up facts they otherwise would not have looked up, etc. In other words, they'll become part-time reporters in their area of expertise.
Now, there are a very limited set of roles that reporters play today (or at least they used to play 20 years ago) that the substantive expert model would probably not support. I think the biggest one is the role of looking for wrong doing on the part of public officials, corporations, etc. Conflicts of interest could make it hard for the substantive experts to write those types of stories, or at least hard to put their name on such a story. But I think this is easily solved by having a few people specialize in this type of writing. I think this role could be supported by the subscription model that I'm imagining.
The problem with this model IMO is the "going out and talking to" and "looking up" parts. Experts in the various fields don't typically do this. They work for academic institutions and think tanks for the most part. If it comes to writing e-mails or picking up the phone, sure they do that. But they are not going to fly around the world to be in the places where events are taking place. If they want to find out about these events, they rely on reporters who do fly around the world to be in these places (many of them quite dangerous). For example you are not going to find an expert in Iranian politics spending much time in Iran with a pen and pad and a camera.
Journalism is a specific skill, which is separate and distinct from expertise in specific subject matters. We have much need for both of these complementary skills. They are much more difficult to combine than you might imagine.
... I still think blogging isn't the end-all be-all that it was originally made out to be for news.
Blogging is to news what bumper stickers are to philosophy, and what sound bites are to politics; short and often non-sequitur cute-isms or rants that are typically nothing more than personal expression.
It's meant to be a statement that reflects reality. Are you aware of the recent massive cuts at ABC News? Expect more everywhere, a lot more. The future is an intrepid reporter sussing out stories on his own or in small work groups, then the individual or small group selling their story to the highest bidder. The Internet and communications technology are the great equalizers, so original reporting can only come from the best connected.
So basically you only want to read news that supports your current bias?
While I don't always agree with what I hear/read in the news. I do like getting both sides of a story...
When you say "your current bias" I hope you mean that in a generic sense...
Personally, I frequent news sites with views opposite my own just to make sure I'm not developing same-view tunnel vision. I have no idea what the news gathering habits are for the public at large.
The iTunes name is really no longer appropriate for all the different media types it acts as a conduit for....iMedia would be better, which I'm sure is owned by someone already, or perhaps something else....How about Media Center?....no, wait,.....
Actually, iLife would have worked too, but not enough foresight for that. Actually, iBook would have been perhaps a better name for the iPad, but years ago, who knew...
The problem with this model IMO is the "going out and talking to" and "looking up" parts. Experts in the various fields don't typically do this. They work for academic institutions and think tanks for the most part. If it comes to writing e-mails or picking up the phone, sure they do that. But they are not going to fly around the world to be in the places where events are taking place. If they want to find out about these events, they rely on reporters who do fly around the world to be in these places (many of them quite dangerous). For example you are not going to find an expert in Iranian politics spending much time in Iran with a pen and pad and a camera.
Journalism is a specific skill, which is separate and distinct from expertise in specific subject matters. We have much need for both of these complementary skills. They are much more difficult to combine than you might imagine.
Why wouldn't a journo seeking 'boots on the ground' confirmation of story points simply consult his or her reliable list of local news sources to fill in the rest of the story? The Internet allows for instant communication from anywhere, why not cull the best of the best from the entire world? The best reporters will have as much access as the lousy reporters, but the difference will be their skill in distilling points of view into a more accurate picture for their (paying) audience.
The problem with this model IMO is the "going out and talking to" and "looking up" parts. Experts in the various fields don't typically do this. They work for academic institutions and think tanks for the most part. If it comes to writing e-mails or picking up the phone, sure they do that. But they are not going to fly around the world to be in the places where events are taking place. If they want to find out about these events, they rely on reporters who do fly around the world to be in these places (many of them quite dangerous). For example you are not going to find an expert in Iranian politics spending much time in Iran with a pen and pad and a camera.
Journalism is a specific skill, which is separate and distinct from expertise in specific subject matters. We have much need for both of these complementary skills. They are much more difficult to combine than you might imagine.
What's the value of flying around the world compared to simply communicating with people who are already there? A journalist who knows little about India dropping in on India for a few days isn't going to provide any great insights, and sending them there is very expensive. If we want facts about what's happening there, we can ask people who are already there and are better equipped to make sense of the facts. I see relatively little need for a "jack of all trades" journalist.
It's meant to be a statement that reflects reality. Are you aware of the recent massive cuts at ABC News? Expect more everywhere, a lot more. The future is an intrepid reporter sussing out stories on his own or in small work groups, then the individual or small group selling their story to the highest bidder. The Internet and communications technology are the great equalizers, so original reporting can only come from the best connected.
I'm aware of the scaling back of news organizations worldwide. A lot of journalists are already independent, but they don't make livings with nobody to buy their product, and as we've heard here many times, more and more people expect journalism to come to them for free. And that's the people who are still interested, which is also a shrinking group.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich
Why wouldn't a journo seeking 'boots on the ground' confirmation of story points simply consult his or her reliable list of local news sources to fill in the rest of the story? The Internet allows for instant communication from anywhere, why not cull the best of the best from the entire world? The best reporters will have as much access as the lousy reporters, but the difference will be their skill in distilling points of view into a more accurate picture for their (paying) audience.
Not from anywhere, from places with internet. Even so, you make it sound like all journalism can now be done sitting in a chair, that the person doing the reporting doesn't ever have to come in actual contact with their subject.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blastdoor
What's the value of flying around the world compared to simply communicating with people who are already there? A journalist who knows little about India dropping in on India for a few days isn't going to provide any great insights, and sending them there is very expensive. If we want facts about what's happening there, we can ask people who are already there and are better equipped to make sense of the facts. I see relatively little need for a "jack of all trades" journalist.
Journalism used to be called the first draft of history. Reporters were the witnesses to events. So now it's a virtual reality game? A hearsay story? I don't think so, or at least I hope that's not the direction it's going.
The problem with this model IMO is the "going out and talking to" and "looking up" parts. Experts in the various fields don't typically do this. They work for academic institutions and think tanks for the most part. If it comes to writing e-mails or picking up the phone, sure they do that. But they are not going to fly around the world to be in the places where events are taking place. If they want to find out about these events, they rely on reporters who do fly around the world to be in these places (many of them quite dangerous). For example you are not going to find an expert in Iranian politics spending much time in Iran with a pen and pad and a camera.
Journalism is a specific skill, which is separate and distinct from expertise in specific subject matters. We have much need for both of these complementary skills. They are much more difficult to combine than you might imagine.
Having worked as a small-market journalist for two decades, my view on the importance of retaining a traditional structure is that it comes down to accountability.
You want there to be some formality to the process, to have those entrusted with gathering and presenting information operating on the premise that if they misstep, there will be consequences. It's fine that we are bombarded with so much apparent information, a lot of it free, but it's important that we not give too much breathing room, if you will, to the very human passion for entertaining but inaccurate gossip. In other words, what we want to avoid is misinformation. Even under the more traditional information-gathering process, of which I played a part, mistakes have been made, wrong impressions generated (often inadvertently) etc. Significanty weakening the traditional sources that have run journalism can only lead to an increase in the distribution of nonsense posing as informed commentary or even worse, as fact.
That having been said, as a former journalist looking in from the outside, I see an industry that has no idea how to move forward. It seems to me that all this talk of a subscription model is mainly a case of wishful thinking. From a consumer's perspective, if we're paying let's say $50 a month for all the TV we can stand and even less than that for a high-speed Internet connection, paying anything close to that to augment so much free news content isn't going to fly.
I find it curious that AP is looking to offer it's content for a fee to the average consumer. AP makes sense charging individual papers for the stories needed to fill out their product. The point behind the service has been that all newspapers (small-market papers especially) don't have the resources to locate journalists throughout the world. You have journalists covering local beats and then fill out your product with items generated by operations like AP, CP and UPI. It's cost-effective to have a handful of journalists producing stories for thousands of newspapers around the world.
I don't know what newspapers are going to do and certainly not what they should do. But I hope they work something out because it is important to have trained professionals carrying out the duties of a journalist. It's not as easy as it looks and all our lives are impacted by the quality of the information we have access to.
If i buy an iPhone app right now and it has adds in it I immediately delete it and leave negative comments (telling why I disapprove it) for that app. I just hope iPad developers don't carry that "tradition" forward into it.
As far as I know there is not an independent online news source that generates enough money to employ and operate a full staff of reporters and editors on advertising alone. The subscription/ad revenue model may be 20th century, but until there is a new model that can generate enough revenue to cover the costs and turn a profit it is the only model that makes sense.
A bigger question is can a subscription be offered at a low enough cost to the consumer that they are willing to pay for the service and will that be enough to run a profitable news business.
Having worked as a small-market journalist for two decades, my view on the importance of retaining a traditional structure is that it comes down to accountability.
Excellent observations. Thank you.
I think the primary misunderstanding that I hear over and over in a variety of guises is that journalism is sort of a non-profession, that having a cell phone camera and a blog or twitter feed makes a person a reporter. I've known quite a few journalists over the years and like every other professional, they come in shapes and sizes from good to bad to indifferent. But I've never had the thought that journalism doesn't require a specific set of skills developed and refined over a period of time, and a real commitment to the gathering of news.
Comments
I think the future belongs to individual reporters with a point of view that reflects your own, the news organization will become history.
So basically you only want to read news that supports your current bias?
While I don't always agree with what I hear/read in the news. I do like getting both sides of a story...
As I've said before in response to iPad stories, I would be willing to pay for very high quality news and analysis. I'm envisioning a kind of news aggregator that brings us the "best of the blogs" or something along those lines. While it's true that most blogs suck, it's also true that there are some that are incredibly good because they are written by substantive experts in a field. Imagine that you had health care articles written by a health care economist or articles on the war in Afghanistan written by a former professor at West Point or articles about Somali pirates written by a Somali pirate? An entity that could pull all that together and provide some editorial oversight to make sure that everything written was accessible to a general audience and to do some vetting of the articles (maybe a peer-review process) -- I would totally pay for that, and I suspect others would too.
Yes, but... reporting does not require expertise, except at reporting. Journalists are not supposed to be experts in the subjects they report on, they are supposed to be experts at finding out about things. This is where the "expert blogger" model breaks down. They might be wonderful at analysis (and the sort of people who traditionally write op-ed pieces for good newspapers), but they are very likely not out in the field reporting on events themselves. They rely on the people who do. So who takes the place of reporting in this brave new journalism model?
I'd gladly pay a 25 cents apiece to read stories that I'm interested in, but I won't pay $25 a month to subscribe to hundreds that I have NO interest in. The digital marketplace is about choice and customization, not the same old packaging that print has required for years. The industry should offer an on-demand model for news consumption and paid readership (profit) would grow. If they keep alienating consumers by forcing us to buy package we don't want (or can't afford), then they will continue to languish.
The old print media is so entrenched in the way things have always worked for them before that they've become averse to the idea that they can still be successful by evolving. This week Apple just sold their 10 BILLIONTH song -- and the buyer did not have to buy the whole artist CD to get it. Sooner or later somebody (besides Apple) will fully grasp this and adapt to offer new consumer options based on customization and choice. That will be the beginning of how a venerable and important news industry can begin to thrive again in the era of digital delivery.
Yes, but... reporting does not require expertise, except at reporting. Journalists are not supposed to be experts in the subjects they report on, they are supposed to be experts at finding out about things. This is where the "expert blogger" model breaks down. They might be wonderful at analysis (and the sort of people who traditionally write op-ed pieces for good newspapers), but they are very likely not out in the field reporting on events themselves. They rely on the people who do. So who takes the place of reporting in this brave new journalism model?
I think that part of the role you're describing will be taken on by the substantive experts. If a substantive expert in, say, federal reserve policy find success in writing stories for a subscription-based news provider, then writing those stories will become a larger part of his/her career. To improve those stories, the writer will need to go out and talk to people in the field, look up facts they otherwise would not have looked up, etc. In other words, they'll become part-time reporters in their area of expertise.
Now, there are a very limited set of roles that reporters play today (or at least they used to play 20 years ago) that the substantive expert model would probably not support. I think the biggest one is the role of looking for wrong doing on the part of public officials, corporations, etc. Conflicts of interest could make it hard for the substantive experts to write those types of stories, or at least hard to put their name on such a story. But I think this is easily solved by having a few people specialize in this type of writing. I think this role could be supported by the subscription model that I'm imagining.
iPad is certainly a very cool device, but it doesn't yet replace the need for newspapers and magazines.
I'd gladly pay a 25 cents apiece to read stories that I'm interested in,
Wow. Maybe you read less news than I do.
I'd have spent 3 or 4 bucks just on the Chile earthquake and impending Hawaii tsunami, just today. And the story is just beginning to be reported in depth, and the tsunami has hours to go before it hits.
When a story interests me, I read it in multiple papers. For example, if there's a mideast bombing, I might read both the Jerusalem Post and Al Jazeera. For political news, I read the NYT and the Washington Post and maybe a couple of others.
Financial news? NYT, WSJ, et. al.
For big deal stuff in small towns, like high school shootings, I read the local papers in addition to the nationals.
And of course, I read the Boston Globe for free every day for the local news and events.
In this day of access to thousands of quality sources at my fingertips, for free, I can't understand subscribing to any single source. Not at any price, unless there's something unique about them, such as certain specialty magazines with content which is ignored by the wider media.
And that's just WRT news. Micropayment systems have already been tried in various contexts, and have never done well. The explanation that makes sense to me is that people hate being nickeled and dimed.
I an sceptical that anybody will be able to keep us down on the farm now that we've seen Paree.
I think what the old established news megaliths (AP, NYT, etc.) are missing is that the subscription paradigm is being supplanted by the on-demand era.
I think you have this exactly right(even the parts I didn't quote). And as another poster says, say you want to get a little news from one source, some more from another. $30/month from each source and suddenly you are spending hundreds of dollars a month.
I personally have ALWAYS hated subscriptions of any sort. I tend to read the news when there is something going on I am interested in, I have time to take a long lunch, I am at the beach, have along flight ahead of me, etc. I am perfectly happy in these cases to put a dollar or two for the NYT or a magazine, and would be open to doing this on the iPad. In fact even if the NYT was $10/month, I'd rather pay $2/issue for it - some months I might get it 10X, some times, I might not get it at all. I find that subscriptions usually wind up with you sending someone a bunch of money every month for something you don't use.
I'm not sure why everyone seems to think the iPad is their chance to force feed the repeatedly failed subscription model - to me this seems like it will just: A) kill the iPad,
The only way I see around this is if they get that CHEAP might work. $3-5/month, and that stuff will move like hotcakes. $20-30, and no one buys it.
I think that part of the role you're describing will be taken on by the substantive experts. If a substantive expert in, say, federal reserve policy find success in writing stories for a subscription-based news provider, then writing those stories will become a larger part of his/her career. To improve those stories, the writer will need to go out and talk to people in the field, look up facts they otherwise would not have looked up, etc. In other words, they'll become part-time reporters in their area of expertise.
Now, there are a very limited set of roles that reporters play today (or at least they used to play 20 years ago) that the substantive expert model would probably not support. I think the biggest one is the role of looking for wrong doing on the part of public officials, corporations, etc. Conflicts of interest could make it hard for the substantive experts to write those types of stories, or at least hard to put their name on such a story. But I think this is easily solved by having a few people specialize in this type of writing. I think this role could be supported by the subscription model that I'm imagining.
The problem with this model IMO is the "going out and talking to" and "looking up" parts. Experts in the various fields don't typically do this. They work for academic institutions and think tanks for the most part. If it comes to writing e-mails or picking up the phone, sure they do that. But they are not going to fly around the world to be in the places where events are taking place. If they want to find out about these events, they rely on reporters who do fly around the world to be in these places (many of them quite dangerous). For example you are not going to find an expert in Iranian politics spending much time in Iran with a pen and pad and a camera.
Journalism is a specific skill, which is separate and distinct from expertise in specific subject matters. We have much need for both of these complementary skills. They are much more difficult to combine than you might imagine.
... I still think blogging isn't the end-all be-all that it was originally made out to be for news.
Blogging is to news what bumper stickers are to philosophy, and what sound bites are to politics; short and often non-sequitur cute-isms or rants that are typically nothing more than personal expression.
Consumers wouldn't want ad-only model. They want to pay for a subscription and get no ads.
fixed.
Is this supposed to be a cheering thought?
It's meant to be a statement that reflects reality. Are you aware of the recent massive cuts at ABC News? Expect more everywhere, a lot more. The future is an intrepid reporter sussing out stories on his own or in small work groups, then the individual or small group selling their story to the highest bidder. The Internet and communications technology are the great equalizers, so original reporting can only come from the best connected.
So basically you only want to read news that supports your current bias?
While I don't always agree with what I hear/read in the news. I do like getting both sides of a story...
When you say "your current bias" I hope you mean that in a generic sense...
Personally, I frequent news sites with views opposite my own just to make sure I'm not developing same-view tunnel vision. I have no idea what the news gathering habits are for the public at large.
Actually, iLife would have worked too, but not enough foresight for that. Actually, iBook would have been perhaps a better name for the iPad, but years ago, who knew...
The problem with this model IMO is the "going out and talking to" and "looking up" parts. Experts in the various fields don't typically do this. They work for academic institutions and think tanks for the most part. If it comes to writing e-mails or picking up the phone, sure they do that. But they are not going to fly around the world to be in the places where events are taking place. If they want to find out about these events, they rely on reporters who do fly around the world to be in these places (many of them quite dangerous). For example you are not going to find an expert in Iranian politics spending much time in Iran with a pen and pad and a camera.
Journalism is a specific skill, which is separate and distinct from expertise in specific subject matters. We have much need for both of these complementary skills. They are much more difficult to combine than you might imagine.
Why wouldn't a journo seeking 'boots on the ground' confirmation of story points simply consult his or her reliable list of local news sources to fill in the rest of the story? The Internet allows for instant communication from anywhere, why not cull the best of the best from the entire world? The best reporters will have as much access as the lousy reporters, but the difference will be their skill in distilling points of view into a more accurate picture for their (paying) audience.
The problem with this model IMO is the "going out and talking to" and "looking up" parts. Experts in the various fields don't typically do this. They work for academic institutions and think tanks for the most part. If it comes to writing e-mails or picking up the phone, sure they do that. But they are not going to fly around the world to be in the places where events are taking place. If they want to find out about these events, they rely on reporters who do fly around the world to be in these places (many of them quite dangerous). For example you are not going to find an expert in Iranian politics spending much time in Iran with a pen and pad and a camera.
Journalism is a specific skill, which is separate and distinct from expertise in specific subject matters. We have much need for both of these complementary skills. They are much more difficult to combine than you might imagine.
What's the value of flying around the world compared to simply communicating with people who are already there? A journalist who knows little about India dropping in on India for a few days isn't going to provide any great insights, and sending them there is very expensive. If we want facts about what's happening there, we can ask people who are already there and are better equipped to make sense of the facts. I see relatively little need for a "jack of all trades" journalist.
It's meant to be a statement that reflects reality. Are you aware of the recent massive cuts at ABC News? Expect more everywhere, a lot more. The future is an intrepid reporter sussing out stories on his own or in small work groups, then the individual or small group selling their story to the highest bidder. The Internet and communications technology are the great equalizers, so original reporting can only come from the best connected.
I'm aware of the scaling back of news organizations worldwide. A lot of journalists are already independent, but they don't make livings with nobody to buy their product, and as we've heard here many times, more and more people expect journalism to come to them for free. And that's the people who are still interested, which is also a shrinking group.
Why wouldn't a journo seeking 'boots on the ground' confirmation of story points simply consult his or her reliable list of local news sources to fill in the rest of the story? The Internet allows for instant communication from anywhere, why not cull the best of the best from the entire world? The best reporters will have as much access as the lousy reporters, but the difference will be their skill in distilling points of view into a more accurate picture for their (paying) audience.
Not from anywhere, from places with internet. Even so, you make it sound like all journalism can now be done sitting in a chair, that the person doing the reporting doesn't ever have to come in actual contact with their subject.
What's the value of flying around the world compared to simply communicating with people who are already there? A journalist who knows little about India dropping in on India for a few days isn't going to provide any great insights, and sending them there is very expensive. If we want facts about what's happening there, we can ask people who are already there and are better equipped to make sense of the facts. I see relatively little need for a "jack of all trades" journalist.
Journalism used to be called the first draft of history. Reporters were the witnesses to events. So now it's a virtual reality game? A hearsay story? I don't think so, or at least I hope that's not the direction it's going.
The problem with this model IMO is the "going out and talking to" and "looking up" parts. Experts in the various fields don't typically do this. They work for academic institutions and think tanks for the most part. If it comes to writing e-mails or picking up the phone, sure they do that. But they are not going to fly around the world to be in the places where events are taking place. If they want to find out about these events, they rely on reporters who do fly around the world to be in these places (many of them quite dangerous). For example you are not going to find an expert in Iranian politics spending much time in Iran with a pen and pad and a camera.
Journalism is a specific skill, which is separate and distinct from expertise in specific subject matters. We have much need for both of these complementary skills. They are much more difficult to combine than you might imagine.
Having worked as a small-market journalist for two decades, my view on the importance of retaining a traditional structure is that it comes down to accountability.
You want there to be some formality to the process, to have those entrusted with gathering and presenting information operating on the premise that if they misstep, there will be consequences. It's fine that we are bombarded with so much apparent information, a lot of it free, but it's important that we not give too much breathing room, if you will, to the very human passion for entertaining but inaccurate gossip. In other words, what we want to avoid is misinformation. Even under the more traditional information-gathering process, of which I played a part, mistakes have been made, wrong impressions generated (often inadvertently) etc. Significanty weakening the traditional sources that have run journalism can only lead to an increase in the distribution of nonsense posing as informed commentary or even worse, as fact.
That having been said, as a former journalist looking in from the outside, I see an industry that has no idea how to move forward. It seems to me that all this talk of a subscription model is mainly a case of wishful thinking. From a consumer's perspective, if we're paying let's say $50 a month for all the TV we can stand and even less than that for a high-speed Internet connection, paying anything close to that to augment so much free news content isn't going to fly.
I find it curious that AP is looking to offer it's content for a fee to the average consumer. AP makes sense charging individual papers for the stories needed to fill out their product. The point behind the service has been that all newspapers (small-market papers especially) don't have the resources to locate journalists throughout the world. You have journalists covering local beats and then fill out your product with items generated by operations like AP, CP and UPI. It's cost-effective to have a handful of journalists producing stories for thousands of newspapers around the world.
I don't know what newspapers are going to do and certainly not what they should do. But I hope they work something out because it is important to have trained professionals carrying out the duties of a journalist. It's not as easy as it looks and all our lives are impacted by the quality of the information we have access to.
A bigger question is can a subscription be offered at a low enough cost to the consumer that they are willing to pay for the service and will that be enough to run a profitable news business.
Having worked as a small-market journalist for two decades, my view on the importance of retaining a traditional structure is that it comes down to accountability.
Excellent observations. Thank you.
I think the primary misunderstanding that I hear over and over in a variety of guises is that journalism is sort of a non-profession, that having a cell phone camera and a blog or twitter feed makes a person a reporter. I've known quite a few journalists over the years and like every other professional, they come in shapes and sizes from good to bad to indifferent. But I've never had the thought that journalism doesn't require a specific set of skills developed and refined over a period of time, and a real commitment to the gathering of news.